I’m worried about this 300 reboot, kids. This is a deeply disturbed individual. [image or embed] — Ron Filipkowski ([@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social](http://ronfilipkowski.bsky.social)) January 8, 2025 at 4:24 PM

🔗 More Speech and Fewer Mistakes | Meta When your standard is post-Elon Twitter, you’re doing it wrong. Read more…

🔗 More Speech and Fewer Mistakes | Meta “We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to …

Audibles: I had plans for this morning, plans I’ve managed to turn into something like a habit over the last few years. Part of those plans was to take a walk. Except that it’s in the low 20s with a windchill that puts it closer to 3 degrees. Not walking in that. So I called an audible: updated some things in …

🔗 ‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6 Not super stoked that they co-opted one of the most memorable scenes from Top Gun for the headline but this is otherwise a solid read. Read more…

🔗 NYT hasn’t gotten the memo to bend the knee. Some days, journalism, you don’t suck. The Jan. 6 tale that Mr. Trump tells is its own kind of replacement theory, one that covers over the marble-hard facts the way a blue carpet will cover those tainted Capitol steps on Inauguration Day. …

Today’s 1000 words: Four years ago today - Their Führer is going to pardon them all in a couple of weeks. Lou Plummer https://social.lol/@amerpie/113780864801943329

Not all heroes wear capes. I thought "Good Thing," by the Fine Young Cannibals, was actually "Fruitcake." The song goes "Good Thing, where have you gone?" And I thought it was "Fruitcake! What have you done?" Okay. Just wanted to get that off my chest. — Stephen King …

Freepi walking pad just unpacked, ready for Monday morning, so I’m officially joining the ranks of semi-mobile hamsters.

Updating the blogging workflow for 2025: currently running the Projects plugin in Obsidian, and a couple plugins that let me post directly to Ghost/micro.blog. Curious if anyone has something similar set up? I’m on PC, and no interest in moving to other platforms at this point.

The Small Rooms: I live in a town of small rooms, where art is fragmented into these places carved out by those who had bigger dreams once but have found themselves if not content at least resigned to the idea that this. Is it. They’re the kind of rooms where people are often neither on the way up, or down, but …

Meet the new year, same as the old year: It’s New Year’s Eve, and long past the point I should have written a retrospective on the year, but if my journal is any indication, I’m nearly exactly where I was a year ago, and nothing about that is worth celebrating. That’s not the most depressing opening paragraph I’ve ever written, but it …

Finished reading: Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen 📚 No one has made me care so much about Florida as Hiaasen over the years and this was just as enjoyable as his other works.

Currently reading: The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo 📚Re-reading all the Hole novels, since I’m struggling to find anything new to keep me entertained. Still, I’d forgotten most of these books, so not exactly bored with this plan.

This would make an amazing SNL sketch and I give it a week before he’s selling club jackets. Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as President understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the Greatest Nation in …

Start Me Up: Happy New Year’s Eve Eve to those who celebrate. It’s day 1 of the week 1 of 2025 and once that mattered more to me than it does now. I’d gotten really good at tracking my goals weekly, quarterly, and beyond, and somewhere I lost sight of that and just existed. Going years being jobless or …

Finding A Voice: Kicking the tires on a daily writing practice, and more specifically a daily blogging practice, since it’s going to be 2025 soon and my timing as always is impeccable. Sitting here as I’ve done for countless hours over the years looking at my Google Calendar and crafting the “perfect” writing …

Tell me you got picked last for kickball without telling me you got picked last for kickball.

Looks like the ride might be coming to an end sooner than we’d hoped over in Trumpland. When your brand is reactionary, once you get your way, the infighting will commence.

I’m agreeing with Ann Coulter about something and I don’t like how that feels.

The times we live in: critics of Elon Musk are getting de-verified on X and at the same time are just garbage people: Preston here opened with a shot at Musk’s neurodiversity and this is my disappointed-not-surprised face.

It’s been a while since I’d written anything that inspired the kind of vitriol this did. Might retool it since it was kind of a one-off and some issues raised seem worth re-examining. dansmock.medium.com/israel-ub…

Hardest part (in this moment, anyway) about learning later in life that I’m on the spectrum is the realization that accommodation is a part of my life now. Helpful, just not always liberating. smock.blog/2024/12/2…

Safe Zones: I used to be an asshole, now I’m just autistic. Back then I wasn’t a people person. Today I’m neurodiverse and exhausted by neurotypicals. Before I could just get over things, now I’m needing accommodation. I’d tell you I don’t know where this is going, but I can see it from here, the winding path …

Out walking this morning and because pre-dawn rocking the Noxgear and got a “Merry Christmas. That’s pretty cool” and I of course said “Merry Christmas…thanks” and now I’m worried my neighbors see me as THAT guy who’s way into Christmas well past the …

Airpark. Fog advisory.

Instead of my usual “Just Google it” I opted to explain “pixelated bukkake” in a group setting so thank you Cards Against Humanity for the Best Christmas Ever.

Call Me Icarus: It’s Christmas morning and I feel like I’m supposed to have words about miracles, magic, and the mayhem of joy that surrounds the hijacking of a pagan fun time in the woods by crass capitalism where we all sit around either a dying tree or a fake one and convince ourselves that the game of gift …

The closest thing to angel’s trumpets this morning were the joints reminding me that yes I’m of that age where yard work needs a recovery day.

As close as I’ll get to a Christmas post today: This is the guy who was born today. Lou Plummer https://social.lol/@amerpie/113713431392652760

Would You Like To Play A Game?: We don’t have a lot of plans for Christmas Eve, or Christmas, or the New Year’s. I’ve been told there’s a trip to Cidercade today, following a foray into a Costco to provision a meal with a few friends who don’t have family here, either. If there was a case for the death of capitalism, it would be a …

In the movies the nerds were always the good guys, the underdogs who took on the establishment and showed everyone it was OK to be nerdy. What we’re learning from Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos is that if you give anyone enough money, they’ll shove the rest of us right into the locker.

I suspect I’m going to be doing more longer things like this one I did right after the election that apparently upset at least one uncle based on his FB post in response.

Still figuring out what I’m doing webwise, but I’ve tinkered with fiction over the years, and in case you’re wondering what that can look like, here’s something I wrote about the guy Jesus took His sweet time raising from the dead.

> I have passed by the watchman on his beat > > And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. It’s from one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, and sums up perfectly walking alone at night in a place without sidewalks or streetlamps, my only purpose to outrun the day behind me. And I …

First heard this from Dan John: Solvitur ambulando, or “it is solved by walking”, and doing a couple miles after arguing with gravity and kettlebells does wonders for my mood going into the morning.

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole after learning that the same people that brought you Sea Monkees also sold stuffed girl’s heads for $2.98 and that some version of that featured in an Animals TV appearance singing “It’s My Life” and how few people mention that in the …

“If you want to have horrible teeth, take a lot of fentanyl.” – Technically, he’s not wrong, but…

This Apprentice reboot is wild. How long before Musk tells him he’s fired?

Ben sounds fun. www.linkedin.com/feed/upda…

I’ve been a dabbler in the internet and writing for a while, but usually under a pseudonym for reasons that made sense at the time. Now? Makes more sense to be under my own name in my little corner of whatever the internet is now. www.dansmock.com/welcome-t…

Welcome to the blog, on Ghost: In the spirit of the tumult that is this time of year, and to get a running start into 2025, I’ve moved the blog to Ghost. If you signed up for this on Substack or micro.blog, you’re getting this as an email from the blog on Ghost. And if you’re fine with that, have a festive …

Tinfoil Nation: In the beginning was a Dane Cook special. This was 2005 Dane Cook, bestride the world of comedy long enough to give us a movie with Jessica Simpson, years before we had to do uncomfortable math about when he first started dating his current girlfriend, and the first known reference to a Karen. …

Tiptoe Through The Tombstones: It’s that time of year, when we all try to guess what we’re supposed to get each other for Christmas, and we all pretend to be thrilled with whatever it is that our loved(ish) one(s) picked out for/made for/regifted us as we sit around lit by the Netflix Yule log, with Spotify blaring your uncle’s …

Chicken Farm: The coverage of the killing of Brian Thompson assumes Stalinesque proportions when we think about how many front line healthcare workers have been punched, spat on, and cursed out when people find out the insurance they’ve been paying for instead of taking the kids on vacation or getting a new …

Josh Shapiro, Ghostbuster: In 1989 Alan More convinced me that class war was inevitable, but I’d probably have to move to the UK for it, which given their predilection for beans as breakfast wasn’t in the cards. Then in 2005 V for Vendetta brought More’s graphic novel to life, and while I kept expecting Hugo Weaving to …

Curiouser and curiouser: Idioms are the bane of a literal mind, and if you’re anywhere on the spectrum, you know the pain of being told you take things too literally. It’s not that we autistics can’t get idioms, it’s that we’re likely to ask questions about their meaning, their origins, and if there’s one thing …

Fogged In: Fog’s a funny thing, floating low altitude clouds, sullied cotton candy, but it has enormous power, enough to get its own verb to describe what it can do. If we’re fogged in we can’t go anywhere: planes can’t fly, cars can’t drive, cruise ships can’t export soft colonialism to countries that …

Trump Finds A Buddy: In a sure sign that we’re all on the naughty list, this year’s Christmas must-have is more Satan than Santa, more Krampus than Kringle, and more Operation: FAFO than Operation: Christmas Drop. And it’s just what everyone who voted for a misogynistic racist felon deserves to have …

Israel Uber Alles: If you’re a small (maybe) nuclear-capable country known for a religion founded by a genocidal deity who’s had to fend off your neighbors for decades and you’re already at war with Hamas and Hezbollah, when one of your adversaries tumbles from power faster than the value of the Hawk …

A Thousand Miles: Heard this once from a friend working with the SF in Afghanistan: about to board a C-130, and during the safety brief, they were told in the event of a crash, find a hole big enough to walk through, and then run until you felt stupid. Want to walk 1,000 miles? Start with a single step. Works for me, …

Family Man, 2024 Edition: Are we really so divided, so used to dehumanizing one another, that people are out here openly celebrating the cold-blooded murder of a hardworking family man?That’s The New Yorker and their take on the killing of Brian Thompson by a criminal mastermind whose one mistake was being seen at a …

Comfort Zones: Feeling good after sleeping in, blowing off the morning’s writing, reducing the daily workout to its bare minimum, and telling myself that I needed the rest, clearly, because why else would I wake up so much later than planned? There’s a place for that, where pulling the covers back up and giving …

In defense of donuts: Made the weekly sugar coma run to one of six donut shops within easy driving distance, all of which are run by Koreans, half of them next to a nail salon, and half of those next to a sushi “restaurant”. Or it used to be, and it’s in quotes for a reason, because the sushi was more than acceptable, it …

Why So Vulnerable: It’s been five years since someone else’s therapist and a close personal friend pointed out that while I’m not counting toothpicks or wearing hearing protection to fast casual restaurants, I’m definitely on the spectrum. Took another couple of years for me to figure out what that meant, and while …

Asking For It: In my continuing quest for filthy lucre, inspired by both my love of shelter and my bank’s insistence that they, too, would like me to keep sending them money, I regularly send out documents that indicate to people who have money they would like to distribute in exchange for services rendered that I …

He Is Risen: I went to bed early last night, hopeful. As a A Man Of A Certain Age, that’s not terribly unusual, and with the time change, I’m following the majority of voters in this country into the 19th century, except I’m just ready to go to sleep when the sun goes down, and they’re ready it to be 1859, or …

The system didn't fail Brendan Depa: We hear it all the time. The system doesn’t work right. The system’s broken. The system failed. Those are comforting words. Words designed to instill belief that something is in place. That if we just tweak it enough, it will save us. The problem is that systems don’t break. They don’t fail. They …

I, Lazarus: Hi. Lazarus here. Of Bethany? Yeah, that Lazarus. Had a couple of sisters, Mary and Martha. Fun fact: I’m the only one mentioned by name in a parable. So that’s cool. Not sure why Jesus cast me as a beggar, but you know, He is the Son of God, so. I guess He gets to do that. Figured it was time to …

I, Lazarus: Hi. Lazarus here. Of Bethany? Yeah, that Lazarus. Had a couple of sisters, Mary and Martha. Fun fact: I’m the only one mentioned by name in a parable. So that’s cool. Not sure why Jesus cast me as a beggar, but you know, He is the Son of God, so. I guess He gets to do that. Figured it was time to …

They have the meats: Hansen tried to forget the last time he’d been in an Arby’s. The memory was nearly there with the first bite of the roast beef sandwich, got closer after the curly fries, then swam into full focus when he took a sip of the Jamocha shake. It was after the Murray thing. Murray was one of the good …

They have the meats: Hansen tried to forget the last time he’d been in an Arby’s. The memory was nearly there with the first bite of the roast beef sandwich, got closer after the curly fries, then swam into full focus when he took a sip of the Jamocha shake. It was after the Murray thing. Murray was one of the good …

How to talk to your 10 year old about consent: Editor’s Note: I’m in the process of pulling in things I’ve written before, figuring out where it fits into the current site, and this was something I did back in April when Arizona was wanting to party like it was 1864 with an abortion ban. I’ve debated posting this for a couple reasons: As of …

In defense of day drinking: In retrospect, the second grenade was overkill. He had said that he wanted it to be loud, make a point, let the neighbors know that something needed to be done, but she didn’t need both grenades for that. It was just a trailer, after all, and considering what was inside it, she could have gotten the …

In defense of day drinking: In retrospect, the second grenade was overkill. He had said that he wanted it to be loud, make a point, let the neighbors know that something needed to be done, but she didn’t need both grenades for that. It was just a trailer, after all, and considering what was inside it, she could have gotten the …

Selling Kabul: Rasul took another sip of tea, looking at the picture the tall American had slid across the table. There were two of them sitting across from Rasul in the lobby of the Islamabad Serena. Not that they’d asked, but Rasul liked the Kabul Serena better. It had been almost a year since he’d last been …

Selling Kabul: Rasul took another sip of tea, looking at the picture the tall American had slid across the table. There were two of them sitting across from Rasul in the lobby of the Islamabad Serena. Not that they’d asked, but Rasul liked the Kabul Serena better. It had been almost a year since he’d last been …

They're coming for our calendars: As the smoke clears after the fire that engulfed actress/model/eyebrow goals Cara Delevigne’s home last week, some things are apparent: Her cats are fineShe’s not wrong about ball pitsThe robots are coming for your calendarsI’m copping to a pop culture reference to make a point about society, …

A love letter to Love's: As a Texas resident, I know the Buc-ee’s. I’m in awe in much the same way I’m in awe of strip mining equipment: I’m impressed by the engineering, a little sad that this exists. Because it’s the near-complete enshittification of the American road trip, taking what was once adventure winding through …